Policy Recommendations to Enhance Effectiveness of River Restoration
published in National Academy of Science journal: Issues in Science and
Technology, 22: 40 - 48.
M A R G A R E T A . PA L M E R
J . D AV I D A L L A N
Restoring Rivers
The work has begun, but we have yet to determine what works best.
B
etween 1973 and 1998, U.S. fresh
waters and rivers were getting cleaner. But
that trend has reversed. If the reverse
continues, U.S. rivers will be as dirty in
2016 as they were in the mid-1970s.
Water quality is not the only problem.
In parts of the United States, the extraction of surface water and groundwater is
so extreme that some major rivers no longer flow to the sea
year round, and water shortages in local communities are
a reality.
The damage and suffering wrought by Hurricane Katrina demonstrate that the restoration of waterways and
wetlands is not a luxury. It is a national imperative. And the
imperative does not apply only to hurricane-prone coastal
waterways. More than one-third of rivers in the United
States are impaired or polluted.
The flood-storage capacity of U.S. rivers is at an alltime low. Water shortages are increasingly common even
40 ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
in eastern states that historically have had plenty of it.
Aquatic wildlife is going extinct at a rate much higher than
organisms in either terrestrial or marine ecosystems. In
June 2004, drinking water in Wisconsin was found to exceed
levels of nitrate considered safe. In July 2005, scientists
reported that high levels of nutrients and sediments from
river tributaries had created a dead zone that blanketed a
third of the Chesapeake Bay. In October 2005, homes in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey were flooded when
rivers overflowed their banks after a week of rain. All three
of these disasters are linked to the degradation of rivers
and streams. And all three of them could have been prevented
by ecological restoration.
River restoration means repairing waterways that can
no longer perform essential ecological and social functions
such as mitigating floods, providing clean drinking water,
removing excessive levels of nutrients and sediments before
they choke coastal zones, and supporting fisheries and
wildlife. Healthy rivers and streams also enhance property
R E S TO R I N G R I V E R S
TERRY FALKE, Bird Refuge in a Dying Sea, Salton Sea, California, Fujiflex, 40 x 48 inches, 1999.
(Collection of the National Academy of Sciences)
WINTER 2006 41
values and are a hub for recreation. Clearly, degraded rivers
and streams need to be repaired.
However, just as rivers are in need of restoration, so too
are the art and practice of restoration itself. A recent study
(in which we participated) published in Science documented a huge number of restoration projects being implemented in every region of the country at great cost and for
a variety of reasons. The projects range from land acquisition (at a median cost of more than $800,000), to bank
or channel reshaping to restore floodplains (median cost
more than $200,000), to keeping livestock out of rivers
and streams (median cost $15,000). However, distressingly
few of them—just 10% of all restoration project records in
the database put together by the National River Restoration Science Synthesis (NRRSS)—included any mention of
assessment or evaluation. The study concluded that it is currently impossible to use existing databases to determine whether
the desired environmental benefits of river restoration are
being achieved. Even when monitoring was reported, it
typically was an assessment of project implementation,
not ecological outcomes.
The nation can do better. The United States needs regulatory and legislative federal policy reforms in order to
improve the effectiveness of river restoration and thus the
health of the nation’s waterways.
H
ow did the United States reach a point
where the majority of our rivers are degraded
and ecologically dysfunctional? People have
always chosen to live and work near water.
Cities and industrial facilities began to grow
up along U.S. waterways centuries ago, and for most of U.S.
history, dilution was the solution to pollution. U.S. streams
and rivers were the dumping grounds for waste, and the hope
was that the waste would be carried away.
Settlers also cut down riparian forests and filled in small
tributaries and wetlands to make transportation and building easier. There was little understanding of the ecological
roles that these forests and tributaries fill. In the first half
42 ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
of the 20th century, massive dams were erected with the goal
of supplying power and minimizing floods. They did accomplish those objectives, but damming also led to the loss of
water-starved native plants and animals downstream. They
could not survive and reproduce without the seasonal
changes in flow that the river had always brought them and
that their life cycles depend on.
With increasing industrialization and population growth,
cities and industries not only continued to dump raw sewage
and other wastes into streams and rivers, but also “paved”
many U.S. streams—lined them with concrete so they could
convey water and pollutants more rapidly. Streams were
viewed as pipelines, not the living entities we now know they
are. Forgotten was their ability, when healthy, to cleanse
water, store sediments, and provide materials essential to healthy
coastal fisheries.
The crisis came in the 1960s, when it became known
that two-thirds of U.S. waterways were polluted. In 1972, the
Clean Water Act (CWA) was passed. Since then, U.S. rivers
and streams have become healthier, largely because of controls over point-source pollution. Then in 2004, for the first
time since the act was passed, the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) reported that waterways were once again getting dirtier.
The primary reason why so many rivers and streams are
still being degraded today is poor land stewardship. Human
activities and alterations of the landscape have diverse and farreaching effects. As land is cleared to build homes and shopping malls, entire watersheds are affected. Construction and
the erosion of farmland introduce massive amounts of sediment into streams. Many streambeds are covered by heavy
layers of silt. This silt suffocates fish eggs and invertebrates living on streambeds, destroys aquatic habitat, and even can
interfere with the treatment of drinking water. Agriculture and
urbanization move excessive amounts of nutrients and toxins from the land to rivers, streams, and coastal waters.
When land is cleared and replaced with hard surfaces
such as parking lots and rooftops, stream flows are governed
primarily by overland runoff or inputs from stormwater
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ONE OF THE MOST PERVASIVE REASONS FOR
RESTORATION FAILURE IS THE IMPLEMENTATION OF A
PROJECT AT ONE POINT ALONG A STREAM WITHOUT
KNOWLEDGE OF UPSTREAM CONDITIONS.
systems, not by the interaction of local climate, vegetation,
and soil characteristics. Rainwater no longer soaks into the
soil before it moves underground toward stream channels,
the normal route for water flow in healthy temperate watersheds. Rapid runoff prevents replenishment of the groundwater table and results in “flashy” stream flows. Flashiness
means more floods that can damage nearby property as well
as flows so low in the summer that entire channels dry up.
Stream and river banks begin to scour and slump. Channels
widen and deepen. If the riparian vegetation has been
removed, which is true for a huge number of streams and
most rivers in the United States, erosion worsens. Moreover,
the large amount of pavement in urban watersheds retains
a lot of heat in the summer, so the flashy flows that follow
heavy rains inundate the streams with pulses of warm water,
destroying fish and bottom-dwelling organisms.
H
ow has the United States tried to solve these
problems? Are the solutions working? It is
not as if nothing has been done. The CWA
went a long way toward minimizing pointsource inputs of pollutants to rivers. Unfortunately, rapid changes in land use and the many effects that
urbanization and agriculture have had on rivers and streams
are not as easy to remedy as point-source discharges.
Attempts have been made to minimize those effects. For
example, the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program
of the Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency paid
farmers to participate in long-term conservation projects such
as planting riparian buffers on their property or keeping land
out of agriculture. In recognition that more diffuse sources
of pollution of waterways have become increasingly common, the EPA recently adopted stricter standards for control of stormwater runoff. This is Phase II of the National
Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, which extends
permitting regulations to smaller population centers. These
regulations require communities and public entities to
develop, implement, and enforce a stormwater program
designed to reduce the discharge of pollutants. In addition,
many cities and towns enacted their own regulations to
slow the clearing of land, to require that only a minimal number of trees be removed during construction, or to mitigate
damage to forests and wetlands.
Despite these and many other efforts to minimize the
environmental impact of developing the land or extracting
natural resources (such as mining), streams and rivers have
continued to degrade. The controls have simply not been able
to keep up with the rate of development and associated
watershed damage. Moreover, many rivers and streams were
suffering years before conservation programs were enacted.
River and stream restoration thus grew out of the recognition that active interventions and aggressive programs
were needed to improve the health of U.S. waterways. There
are many ways to restore rivers, and they vary depending on
the underlying problem. The most common goals of river
and stream restoration are to improve water quality, manage or replant riparian vegetation, enhance in-stream habitat, provide for fish passage, and stabilize banks. Practices
for accomplishing these goals are diverse and overlapping.
For example, bank stabilization can be achieved in a
number of ways, including riparian plantings, wire baskets
filled with stones, large slabs of concrete, and rope netting.
Improving water quality may involve enhancing upstream
stormwater treatment and planting vegetation along stream
banks. Enhancing habitat and improving fisheries may
require adding logs or boulders to streams, constructing
ladders for migrating fish that cannot pass dams, or reconnecting a river floodplain to its channel to provide spawning habitat or nursery grounds for young fish.
Restoration activities such as these are now common in
the United States. For example, in Kentucky, the LexingtonFayette Urban County Government has an annual Reforest
the Bluegrass day in which thousands of trees are planted
along local streams in order to improve water quality and
habitat for aquatic life. In suburban Maryland, restoration
of a stream in the Paint Branch watershed involved installation of a bypass pipe that redirected warm stormwater coming from a subdivision. This kept the stream water cool, elim-
WINTER 2006 43
inating a thermal barrier to trout, while reducing peak flows
during storms. Near Albuquerque, New Mexico, portions of
the west bank of the Rio Grande were cleared of the invasive Russian olive plant, and land adjacent to the river was
lowered to allow water to flow over the bank during spring
snowmelt. This has helped maintain native vegetation and
created a functional floodplain.
These examples are among the river restoration success
stories. Unfortunately, we also know of many, many failures.
In Maryland, an effort to reconfigure a stream channel
using bulldozers and artificially created pools resulted in flooding. Fixing the problem involved straightening the stream
channel to restore its prior form as well as the large expenditure of money and time. In California, large amounts of
gravel are added to rivers every year to provide spawning
habitat for salmon, but it is not clear whether this gravel remains
in place or that salmon populations are increasing. In the
Midwest, sand traps are dug along agricultural fields to prevent silting and eutrophication of adjacent streams, yet
large amounts of nutrients still move down the Mississippi
to the Gulf.
One of the most pervasive reasons for restoration failure
is the implementation of a project at one point along a
stream without knowledge of upstream conditions. If serious upstream problems are not addressed, riparian replanting or channel stabilization projects that are implemented
downstream are likely to fail.
T
hese failures and the fact that the health of
coastal areas such as the Chesapeake Bay continues to decline despite thousands of stream
and river restoration projects demonstrate that
something is wrong with U.S. restoration policies. The health of U.S. waterways is not improving fast
enough despite the fact that the number of projects in the
United States is increasing rapidly. The country is now
spending well over $1 billion per year on river and stream
restoration, and it is not getting its money’s worth.
The problem is that there are no policies to support
44 ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
restoration standards, to promote the use of proven methods, or to provide basic data needed for planning and implementing restoration. Although much is known about effective restoration, this information has not been used in most
projects or policies. For this reason, many restoration efforts
fail: Stream banks collapse, pollutants from upstream reaches
that were never considered for restoration overwhelm newly
restored sites downstream, channel reconfiguration projects
that were overengineered are buried in sediment, and flood
waters flow over river banks.
What to do? First, government officials must deal with
the fact that most restoration projects are being done piecemeal, with little or no assessment of ecological effectiveness. They do not even know which of the various restoration approaches are most effective. In addition, there is
little coordination among restoration plans and projects in
most watersheds.
Second, because there are no national standards for
measuring success in restoration, there is no system for
evaluating how effective projects are. Watershed managers
and restoration practitioners have little guidance for choosing among various restoration methods to ensure ecological improvements.
Third, the United States has no national tracking system that gathers basic information on what is done where
and when. Thus, there is no way to prioritize projects based
on what is being done elsewhere or what is known to work.
The solution to pollution is to reform federal, state, and
local policies. Here we address the federal level because of
the critical role that federal policies play in funding and
permitting restoration projects. Different regulations and laws
are needed in four areas.
Federal agencies must be directed to adopt and abide by
standards for successful river and stream restoration.
Progress in the science and practice of river restoration has
been hampered by the lack of agreed-on criteria for judging ecological success. The restoration community—which
includes legislators, agencies, practitioners, and citizen
groups—should adopt common criteria for defining and assess-
R E S TO R I N G R I V E R S
ing ecological success in restoration. Success can also be
achieved through the involvement of stakeholders and learning from experience, but it is ecological success that will improve
the health of U.S. waterways.
Five basic standards have been recommended by an eminent team of U.S. scientists and engineers and endorsed by
an international group of river scientists as well as by restoration practitioners. The standards are:
• The design of a river restoration project should be
based on a specific guiding image of a more dynamic,
healthy river.
• The river’s ecological condition must show measurable improvement.
• The river system must be more self-sustaining and
resilient to external perturbations, so that only minimal followup maintenance is needed.
• During the construction phase, no lasting harm should
be inflicted on the ecosystem.
• Both pre- and post-assessments must be completed
and data made publicly available.
Simple metrics are already available that can be applied to
each standard, so implementing the standards would not be
difficult. If federal agencies involved in funding river restoration adopted these standards, it would go a long way toward
ensuring that projects meet their stated ecological goals.
Congress should ensure that restoration projects are
credible by requiring recipients of federal funds to adhere
to the standards for ecologically successful restoration projects. Several notable authorization bills that govern river restoration at the federal level are the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), the farm bill, and the transportation bill.
These bills can be used to establish requirements for monitoring outcomes and tracking agency performance. Authorization bills can thereby direct money increasingly toward
effective strategies. Appropriations bills can also require
agencies to adopt standards. These bills often include language that directs an agency to take specific action. Requiring an agency to adopt particular standards for implementing ecological restoration projects could also be included in
an agency’s annual appropriations.
Regardless of the mechanism, requiring standards that ensure
better tracking and evaluation of restoration project outcomes
will enhance not only individual projects but also others that
follow. Accountability is essential.
Federal standards and guidelines that have implications
for river restoration should be amended to incorporate the
five proposed basic standards. This should include the revision of restoration manuals and design criteria. Formal
policies, guidance documents, and manuals include not
only those dealing with the design and implementation of
projects, but also those offering general guidance or addressing restoration planning or oversight. Although amending
of statutes or regulations may be ideal and in some cases
required to inject basic standards for ecological restoration, amending present practices and procedures also will
be helpful. Because a number of agencies provide funding
for river restoration, often with agency-specific areas of
emphasis, it may be preferable to assign responsibility for
the development of standards and guidelines to individual
agencies. However, all should comply with the five goals
listed above, and mechanisms must be developed to ensure
interagency coordination and common reporting.
For example, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers undertakes a wide array of activities that affect rivers and streams,
including river restoration. Like most agencies, the Corps
is supposed to adhere to statutes and the interpreting regulations that govern these activities to protect and restore
environmental quality, among other public interests. The Corps,
like other agencies, is further governed by standards and guidelines. These are outlined in a series of engineer manuals
that provide general guidance on how to undertake various
activities, including, for example, how to construct floodcontrol projects, how to stabilize riverbanks, and how to manage water releases from dams. Because of the significant
increase in the amount and frequency of the Corps’ involvement in river restoration projects, the agency should publish a new engineer manual that outlines acceptable practices and specifications for river restoration. Those should
include some codification of the five basic standards for
ecological success described above or something similar.
Other agencies—for example, the Department of Agriculture and the Natural Resources Conservation Service—use
similar guidance documents. They also should undertake similar revisions.
In addition, new restoration funding programs should be
formed and some of the existing ones reformed. There is a
critical need for federally funded programs that focus on specific regions and serve as model programs in balancing
both human and ecosystem needs to maximize the restoration of services that healthy rivers provide.
To incorporate key elements of sound science into river
restoration, projects must include goal- or hypothesis-driven
restoration projects that place a high priority on monitoring, develop restoration designs that minimize environmental impacts, and demonstrate ecological improvement. These
key elements should be incorporated into the internal policies and guidelines of the new or reformed restoration pro-
WINTER 2006 45
grams and be met before grants or contracts to fund restoration are awarded. This will require programmatic tools to assist
groups in effective project implementation and compliance
with environmental, monitoring, and reporting regulations.
Existing programs that attempt to do what we have outlined include the CALFED Bay-Delta Ecosystem Restoration
Program and the Chesapeake Bay Program.
A coordinated tracking system for restoration projects
must be implemented. If the restoration of aquatic ecosystems is to be effective, restorers must be able to learn from
past efforts. At present there is no coordinated tracking of
river restoration projects. Existing federal databases are
highly fragmented, often relying on ad hoc or volunteer
data entry. They are inadequate for evaluating even the
most basic trends in river restoration. Bernhardt et al. found
that these national databases cataloged less than 8% of the
projects in the NRRSS database. They could not be used to
evaluate regional differences in restoration goals, expenditures, and assessment.
Agencies at all levels of government that share jurisdiction over rivers and streams are engaging in restoration
projects of various kinds. Legislators who authorize projects and appropriate funds are also taking greater notice of
the opportunities presented by river restoration projects
that can drive funding toward their districts and constituents.
Thus, there is an urgent need for a centralized tracking system that catalogs every stream and river restoration project implemented in the United States. This should include
at least the following information for every project: Geographic
Information Systems coordinates; spatial extent, intent, and
goals; a catalog of project actions; implementation year;
contact information; cost; and monitoring results.
Restoration monitoring presents its own suite of challenges.
Implementation monitoring—determining whether a project was built as designed, is in compliance with permit
requirements, and was implemented using practices that
had been vetted by effectiveness-monitoring research programs—is not carried out routinely. This monitoring should
be required of all projects and included in the centralized
database. This ensures compliance with permits and with
stated intents and requires that monitoring be part of project planning and designed in light of project goals.
Effectiveness monitoring involves an in-depth research
evaluation of ecological and physical performance to determine whether a particular type of restoration or method of
implementation provides the desired environmental benefits. Because effectiveness monitoring is time-consuming
and expensive, it is unrealistic to make this a routine expectation. However, it is necessary when comparing the effec-
46 ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
tiveness of different restoration approaches, when evaluating unproven restoration practices, or when the ecological
risks of a project are considered high.
The national tracking of restoration projects, including
implementation and effectiveness-monitoring information,
will ensure that projects are chosen wisely and that money
is spent carefully. The EPA is a good candidate because of
its role in overseeing compliance with the CWA and involvement in ecological monitoring. The U.S. Geological Survey
is also a good candidate because of its involvement in water
science and stream-flow monitoring. Regardless of which
agency houses the national database tracking stream restoration, it is essential that individual agencies and other reporting entities maintain compatible databases with an internal structure that allows easy merges and “drop-down”
boxes to ensure reporting in standardized categories.
Undertake a national study to evaluate the effectiveness
of restoration projects. Because restoration effectiveness has
not received adequate attention, it is not always clear which
restoration methods are most appropriate or most likely to
lead to ecological improvements. Agency practitioners often
rely on best professional judgment that their projects are
meeting intended ecological goals, rather than undertaking scientific measurement and evaluation. Only a small fraction of projects are currently being monitored to determine
their relative success, so little is known about the environmental benefits. Something must be done to ensure that projects are doing what they set out to do and that money is
well spent.
Although monitoring of project effectiveness in meeting
ecological goals is always desirable, not every project requires
sophisticated and costly effectiveness monitoring. In fact, many
people worry that such an expectation would diminish the
number of restoration projects on the ground by siphoning off available resources.
One way to balance the need for evaluation and accountability with limited resources is to conduct detailed monitoring of a sample of projects. The information gained
would provide an efficient means of understanding project
effectiveness and help restorers learn from the experience
of others. Such a program could involve detailed monitoring of a sample of all projects within each of the major categories of river and stream restoration, perhaps beginning
with the most interventionist restoration practices (such
as channel reconfiguration) or the most costly forms of
restoration (such as floodplain reconnection).
In 2002, Congress included language in a Department of
the Interior appropriations bill that directs the National
Research Council (NRC) to examine federal and nonfederal
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CONGRESS SHOULD ENSURE THAT RESTORATION
PROJECTS ARE CREDIBLE BY REQUIRING RECIPIENTS OF
FEDERAL FUNDS TO ADHERE TO THE STANDARDS FOR
ECOLOGICALLY SUCCESSFUL RESTORATION PROJECTS.
water resources programs and provide recommendations for
a national research program that would maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of existing programs. The NRC
has completed several reports that evaluate water research
programs and is considering a study on river restoration.
We recommend that such a study panel be funded immediately and directed to recommend the design, scope, and
costs of a new research program. The program should
explicitly evaluate which restoration methods are most
effective at achieving the desired goals and delineate which
project types require only modest compliance monitoring
and which need detailed monitoring.
Because the data are currently insufficient to enable an
NRC study committee to reach firm conclusions through
synthesis of existing data and expert analysis, the panelists
should be directed to identify needed further research. Furthermore, the panel should identify the appropriate agency
to oversee this research program in order to ensure that
peer review of all research is conducted and that restoration
effectiveness data are collected by an entity that is independent from those conducting or funding restoration. It
is standard practice to conduct double-blind studies when
human health is concerned. It is no less important when the
future of clean water and freshwater resources is at risk.
Use existing funding for river restoration more efficiently and supplement funding. Although there are many
areas in which Congress and federal agencies could make
improvements in the policy and practice of river restoration,
it is first necessary to ensure that existing funding is wisely
allocated so that projects are successful. That means developing a mechanism to authorize and fund restoration projects in a much more coordinated fashion than the balkanized system that supports them today. There are more
than 40 federal programs that fund stream and river restoration projects. Although large-scale high-profile projects
such as those in the Everglades receive a great deal of attention, most projects in the United States are small in spatial
extent. The cumulative costs and benefits of the many small
restoration projects can be very high, which argues for bet-
ter coordination.
We suggest that a Water Resources Restoration Act
(WRRA) could serve as a mechanism to authorize and fund
river restoration projects. Like WRDA, WRRA would support projects of various shapes and sizes, all for the purpose
of making federal investments in natural capital and infrastructure. Money would still flow through individual agencies, but prioritization and coordination would be achieved
through an administrative body with representation from all
agencies that fund river restoration activities. That body
would ensure that restoration funds are spent efficiently as
well as address unmet needs. These projects would yield
enormous benefits in the form of ecosystem services, including flood control, protection of infrastructure, and maintenance of water quality. They also would have benefits similar to those of more traditional infrastructure projects. They
create jobs in member districts, but if they are carefully chosen and designed, they can also save taxpayer money. By
including interagency tracking mechanisms and building
in compliance monitoring requirements to each project,
Congress can ensure the necessary feedback and accountability to make these projects wise investments. Instead of
funds being allocated independently by 40-plus federal programs, WRRA would ensure that project prioritization occurs
on watershed scales and is based on criteria that are consistent across the nation.
In addition to the need for better coordination and thus
more efficient use of existing funding, current funding falls
short of what is needed. The magnitude of the problems and
the demands that citizens are making for healthier waters
require additional funds for cleaning U.S. rivers and streams.
Aging sewer and stormwater infrastructure combined with
increased development of the land make it imperative that
a combined approach involving better coordination and
an increase in funding be a priority. Additional funding
will not only make possible more recovery of damaged river
ecosystems, but will enable inter- or intraagency mechanisms
for tracking projects and allow more pre- and post-project
monitoring of their effectiveness. New funding will not be
WINTER 2006 47
easy to come by in the current budget climate and with
increased competition for investments in water quality.
Many federal programs that involve river restoration are
being cut, not increased. The growing need for upgrading
stormwater and sewer infrastructure goes hand in hand
with river restoration; one cannot replace the other. Only
together will they accomplish the goals of improved water
quality, more productive fisheries, and the restoration of other
services that rivers provide.
River restoration is a necessity, not a luxury. U.S. citizens
depend on the services that healthy streams and rivers provide. People from all walks of life are demanding cleaner, restored
waterways. Replacing the services that healthy streams provide with human-made alternatives is extremely expensive,
so river restoration is akin to investments such as highways,
municipal works, or electric transmission. Congress already
commits billions of taxpayer dollars in public infrastructure through the transportation bill or WRDA. It should
make similar investments in natural capital.
Much can be accomplished by allocating scarce resources
and prioritizing efforts based on sound policies that ensure
that the most effective methods are applied and that agreedon standards are adhered to. Changes in agency policies
and practices require overcoming bureaucratic inertia and
confronting competing constituencies. Instituting tracking
systems and comprehensive studies of project effectiveness
requires cooperation among multiple agencies, scientists, environmental groups, and affected industries. But with congressional oversight and wise appropriation of scarce dollars, U.S.
rivers and streams can once again flow clear and clean.
Recommended reading
J. S. Bash and C. S. Ryan, “Stream Restoration and Enhance-
48 ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
ment Projects: Is Anybody Monitoring?” Environmental Management 29 (2002): 877–885.
E. S. Bernhardt, M. A. Palmer, J. D. Allan, G. Alexander, S.
Brooks, S. Clayton, J. Carr, C. Dahm, J. Follstad-Shah,
D. L. Galat, S. Gloss, P. Goodwin, D. Hart, B. Hassett,
R. Jenkinson, G. M. Kondolf, S. Lake, R. Lave, J. L. Meyer,
T. K. O’Donnell, L. Pagano, P. Srivastava, and E. Sudduth, “Restoration of U.S. Rivers: A National Synthesis,”
Science 308 (2005): 636–637 (supporting online material is available at www.nrrss.umd.edu).
B. Hassett, M. A. Palmer, E. S. Bernhardt, S. Smith, J. Carr,
and D. Hart, “Status and Trends of River and Stream
Restoration in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed,” Frontiers
in Ecology and the Environment 3 (2005): 259–267.
B. H. Hill and R. Blair, “Monitoring the Condition of Our
Nation’s Streams and Rivers: From the Mountains to the
Coasts,” Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 103
(2005): 1–4.
M. A. Palmer, E. Bernhardt, J. D. Allan, G. Alexander, S.
Brooks, S. Clayton, J. Carr, C. Dahm, J. Follstad-Shah,
D. L. Galat, S. Gloss, P. Goodwin, D. Hart, B. Hassett,
R. Jenkinson, G. M. Kondolf, S. Lake, R. Lave, J. L. Meyer,
T. K. O’Donnell, L. Pagano, P. Srivastava, and E. Sudduth, “Standards for Ecologically Successful River
Restoration,” Journal of Applied Ecology 42 (2005):
208–217.
Margaret A. Palmer ([email protected]) is professor and
director of the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory at the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science in
Solomons, Maryland. J. David Allan ([email protected]) is
a professor at the School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.